4015. Printwiser Estimating 9.0 Upgrade: We completed the transfer of the summary estimate values including extra/outside costs and the bindery list to the spreadsheet table, before moving on to the client-side of implementing the Flexible Estimate Spreadsheet report menu item and building the report generation parameter window and then the estimates and columns selection logic.

4026. Printwiser Estimating 9.0 Upgrade: We completed coding of the parameter window and got the very first flexible estimate spreadsheets displaying—the result of all the days of design, planning and coding since December—exporting them to Excel format and happy to see the descriptive column names were still retained, only converted to lower case. The next day, we coded the transfer of press room values to the estimate spreadsheet (Preparation and Machine Room categories).

4041. Printwiser Estimating 9.0 Upgrade: We mainly did testing and revision of the spreadsheet conversion, including resolving issues like some amounts from the estimate summary section like total price, agency commission, unit price being too low, and wrong assignment of column group code.

4052. Printwiser Estimating 9.0 Upgrade: Tested and revised the spreadsheet generation in Printwiser, also building the executable; by day’s end we were more or less done with the flexible spreadsheet feature and began updating the Revision Notice user documentation.

4063. Printwiser Estimating 9.0 Upgrade: Added finishing touches to the initial implementation of the flexible estimate spreadsheet in Printwiser: Introducing a Deselect All button for the parameter window during column selection and sorting the spreadsheet by estimate group when it was selected. Moved on to the remaining upgrade requirements of implementing Estimate Group List data entry and activating the data entry of both group and format on the Estimate Form, followed by implementing setting up access shortcut to a standalone (backup) database, borrowing some code for this from EPPMS.

4074. Printwiser Estimating 9.0 Upgrade: Completed the remaining task of implementing estimate copying using a second standalone database, then after testing that, began testing the database upgrade script against a local copy of the client’s database from version 8.01, finding surprises as expected.

4085. Printwiser Estimating 9.0 Upgrade: We finalized testing against the copy of client’s database with necessary revisions, informing the client at the day’s end about visiting them for installation. Next thing we needed to do was test estimate reading from the separate Planning 7.1 database also used by the client, and create the needed database update script for it, then update the help file before creating the installers, which we would upload to our server and send the client the download links.

4096. Printwiser Estimating 9.0 Upgrade: We tried estimate reading from a copy of the local Planning database for the client, and as expected there were a couple of column-not-found errors, so we created the database update script for that. The next day we began updating the chm help documentation, which was later completed with compiling of the help file.

4111. Printwiser Estimating 9.0 Upgrade: We created and tested the client and database update installers, later doing needed revisions and also putting up two other installers for the complete client installer for first-time installations, and the standalone Planning database update.

4122. Printwiser Estimating 9.0 Upgrade: We uploaded the installers to our server as one compressed file and emailed the client the download link. Later in the day we saw email from the client but instead of responding to the one we sent it was reporting an issue with candidate listing in a version of Labelwriter.

The past few days we had been seeing Blog-generated email messages to the effect some people were spamming the Blog with “medical” and “darknet” link posts and we spent time deactivating the spam messages and eventually disabling the comment submission button, pending the time we would implement anti-spam checks on comments. Despite disabling the Submit button, a couple of the spam comments still got through later in the day, and also after we removed the button itself, so we finally removed the comments form. We suspected the spammers had access to the DOM of the Blog page using a tool, so could effect submission without the button. It could also more likely be that they had the page open already before the button was removed.

When checking records of the spam messages we saw that they were virtually all directed at the same September 2020 post, with 1,638 comments that started on February 14, mostly in English but with a few Russian looking text, each with HTML code for the <a> tag link to a website. When the comment got displayed on the page, the <a> code was replaced with the actual clickable link. On March 13, there were 240 comments, same or more on the following days. A particular day had 275 comments, some submitted within a few seconds of each other. When we opened the page after disabling the comments there were 7,423 views reported! Before we disabled the Submit button one spam post had already been sent minutes earlier as we were working. We wondered what happened when a browser tried to display the page with 1,638 comments. Most likely the comments were submitted robotically, so before we enable the Submit button again we would need to secure the process, and also limit how many comments could be retrieved from the database.

4133. The reported Labelwriter issue made us postpone visiting the client as we re-examined the code that produced the faulty candidate listing report, made a revision and sent the installer for version 10.0.06.

4155. We coded enhancements to the Blog post comments section to address spammers before allowing the comment form to show again, including restricting the maximum number of comments fetched to 100, rejecting certain comments, and implementing some randomly-selected questions one of which must be correctly answered before a comment was accepted.

4214. We downloaded the zipped file the client emailed on the still persisting Labelwriter candidate listing issue, later importing and processing the candidate list spreadsheet so we could see things for ourselves.

4225. On Labelwriter we completed generating the carton labels and candidate listing and identified two zones with issues, having higher number of candidates in the listings than they should, so will next have to investigate how this came about, suspecting wrong candidate range assignment to their centers.

4236. We investigated the candidate listing issue in Labelwriter, finding out that the candidate range assignment was flawless and then there were duplicated candidates in two zones that had excess-candidate issues. Generating envelope labels with box numbers first was supposed to address this but it appeared there was a problem there.

4240. On the Labelwriter candidate list issue, we finally found and addressed the causes, in the assignment of candidate ranges to the packing list during envelope label generation as well as in the candidate listing report code itself. We created the update installer for the new version 10.0.07 and confirmed that it produced the right results for those two zones that had issues. The next day we wrote and emailed report of the candidate listing issue investigation and resolution to the client, including the download link for the installer and other output spreadsheet files.

4262. Printwiser Estimating 9.0 Upgrade: Visited the Printwiser client, Academy Press Plc and discussed with a manager and his Estimating staff on their feedback on the Flexible Estimate Spreadsheet upgrade, taking down their suggestions for review. We then reviewed the department’s list of “observations” on Printwiser Estimating dating back to 2020, most of which were no longer applicable.

4274. Paid technical support visit to NRC, where we imported IPPIS payroll for March and April into EPPMS, then discussed a couple of new requests for work to be done on EPPMS.